For the moment, debt capital markets (DCM) looks like the place to be at Goldman. The bank’s fixed income sales and trading business had a horrible quarter, comparable with Morgan Stanley’s, which begs the question whether the firm’s fixed income trading business is too small to thrive in a world where the winner’s take all.

Equity sales and trading looks tiny at Goldman, although is possibly deceptive as we’ve only included the bank’s equities execution revenues and left out commissions and fees and securities services (which other banks don’t necessarily include either).

Chart 11 underscores the extent to which Goldman really needs to cut costs after this quarter. – Something which Bloomberg says it’s busy doing already, while chart 13 suggests any cost cutting is bound to fall disproportionately upon pay.

Does Goldman Sachs deserve its crown? You decide.

1. Among US investment banks, Goldman Sachs was the market leader in M&A revenues in the first quarter…

2. But Goldman’s M&A business seems to be losing market share to Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan’s…

Comments (1)

The Fix Inc rev graph stands out. But no one is saying or pointing out that last year the whole Street just had a crazy Q1.
I know people love to talk about results in comparison to last year. But I would be curious how it compares to say 2013/2014 instead?
Lets just say 2015 Q1 was an anomaly. Then are this past quarter’s rev really that bad???